Sunday, July 8, 2012

ESL Vocabulary Development Using the Newspaper

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English
Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the
week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but
still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Answer/Quote: “Begin with newspaper ads. Point out
pictures and say ‘This is a …[car, carrot, tree]…. Have students repeat the
phrases after you and intersperse auditory drill at various stages by asking
them to point out the various objects by name (noun label), action (verb
label), or description (adjective label).”

Yes/No Responses. “Now reverse
the procedure by turning the statements into questions which require only
‘yes/no’ responses, e.g., ‘Is the car orange?’ or ‘Does the tree grow?’ or ‘Is
this [point to the car] a carrot?’

Positive
Statements.
“Gradually guide students to make statements about newspaper objects by
requiring them to elaborate on ‘yes/no’ responses.”

Pronouns. “As students
develop statements, above, guide them to substitute pronouns for the subjects
and objects.”

Question Forms: “Students need
an opportunity of form questions since the teacher has a tendency to be the one
asking questions a large percentage of the time. Work to reverse this habit by
following a teacher question—student response interaction with a request for
the student to ask the same question of another student.”

Noun Plurals: “Have
nonreaders find pictures of objects in the paper and clip them for
categorization under ‘one’ (singular) or ‘more than one’ (plural), labeling
each object appropriately with its singular or plural name (e.g., carrots,
chair).”

Comment: This is pretty basic stuff. But it shows the
classroom teacher how the ESL teacher can begin with pretty basic stuff from
the newspaper. A place to start. The real problem, of course, is teaching academic English. In the next few weekends, I will provide some ideas on teaching academic English to ESL studentw. RayS.